Prior Lake school board will try moving forward

When Chris Lind and Superintendent Tom Westerhaus sit down at the same school board table for the first time tonight, the Prior Lake-Savage board will be considering three daunting issues: More than a million dollars in budget cuts, the search for a new superintendent and a possible wrongful termination lawsuit from Lind himself.

The moral of the story for school officials? Everybody needs to get along.

"We have no choice -- all of us -- but to work together," said Westerhaus. "We have to make that work, and I have to make it work, and I will. But I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that it's going to be difficult."

Lind, who takes his oath of office tonight, was fired from Prior Lake High School in June for talking to students on campus about their sexual orientation. His election to the school board prompted Westerhaus, who recommended Lind's firing, to announce he would resign.

Westerhaus will leave the district at the end of the school year, causing an uproar in the community and pleas for Lind to step down.

"I think it'll be awkward," Lee Shimek, the board's likely 2008 chairwoman, said of the situation. "But as a group of seven, we all have different views on things and we need to learn to respect each other's views and move forward. That will help the community to heal."

A quality-of-life issue

While voting 4-2 to fire Lind, the school board detailed a pattern of increasing discipline against him, saying that he spoke to students on campus about their sexual orientation and that one student overheard him telling another that it was "National Pick On Lesbians Day."

Lind said he was told by district officials that he couldn't talk to current or former district students, even away from campus, about traditional values such as abstinence, even at a Bible study in his home or in youth group meetings at church.

Lind, 44, declined to comment for this article.

In November, Westerhaus said he would leave the district at the end of the school year when his contract expired, because he couldn't imagine disciplining and firing an employee and then having to work for that person. In a letter to staff at the time, he wrote: "The community has spoken through this election."

In December, Lind's lawyer sent a letter to the school district suggesting a monetary settlement for Lind to avoid a lawsuit. Details of that letter have not been made public. At today's meeting, the board will discuss a request from Lind for mediation.

"We can't let the Chris Lind conflict right now hinder the long-term picture," he said.

Making it work

Whether that's possible remains to be seen.

Karen Rae Mord, an ardent supporter of Lind's, said she warned the board in June that the issue could grow exponentially.

"I told them, 'I want to warn you that this is very big,'" she said. "A teachers strike from the 1980s is still a source of contention here. This is a community that doesn't forgive and forget very easily."

Westerhaus said that a Wednesday in-service to help introduce Lind and Dee Dee Francis, the other new board member, to the ways of the school board went well.

"Everything that is occurring in the district -- from school board elections to the referendum to the budget cuts to the operations of the new board -- has all become tied into [Lind's] termination," Westerhaus said, "and I absolutely could never have predicted this."